Ok so where do I start. I have a 120 gallon tank with a 20 gallon sump. I have about 100 lbs of live sand and 100 lbs of live rock. Skimmer, bio pellet reactor, chiller. Lighting is 2 AI sol blue fixtures. Tank is just over three months old. I bought most of the live rock from a member who was taking down his setup (cured) and the other 50 lbs came out of my two established nanos. I had a very small initial cycle. We are talking trace ammonia and nitrites. Time goes by and I start transferring coral and fish in to this 120 once the levels dropped to 0 and the diatoms cleared.
Several weeks go by and things are great. I began to get a green hair algae bloom and shorting my light cycles did nothing so i began dosing prodibio Biodigest and bioptim. (that stuff is great BTW) during this time I began to have some temp swings at night as well. Then came the crash. woke up at 5 am and the clowns and damsels were spotted with ich and couldnt swim straight, temp had falled to 70-71 overnight. Everything but my orange spotted goby dies. So I let this tank sit some more (3-4 weeks) and stopped dosing the prodibio. I add a single melanarus wrasse after seeing my duncans and clams open and remain open for a few days. He seemed to be doing good so I added 2 perculas, and then a yellow tang today. When adding the tang I noticed the wrasse has been missing today.
There are a few things i suspect. I have never registered a nitrate on the api test. Phosphates are trace, no ammonia, no nitrites, dkh is 9-10, calcium is 420. this past week I have started watching ORP. My tank has never been above 190 in the past week. One item of interest is that my ehiem heater sprung a leak. I noticed yesterday that water had made it in the glass tube and began rusting in the bottom 2 inches. One other thing is that i suspect my flow is too low in the biopellet reactor. They barely tumble and im using half of the recommended amount of pellets. After that i am out of ideas. How can I keep my fish alive? What is causing my orp to stay so low? Feedings are minimal and there are only 4 fish in the tank.
Several weeks go by and things are great. I began to get a green hair algae bloom and shorting my light cycles did nothing so i began dosing prodibio Biodigest and bioptim. (that stuff is great BTW) during this time I began to have some temp swings at night as well. Then came the crash. woke up at 5 am and the clowns and damsels were spotted with ich and couldnt swim straight, temp had falled to 70-71 overnight. Everything but my orange spotted goby dies. So I let this tank sit some more (3-4 weeks) and stopped dosing the prodibio. I add a single melanarus wrasse after seeing my duncans and clams open and remain open for a few days. He seemed to be doing good so I added 2 perculas, and then a yellow tang today. When adding the tang I noticed the wrasse has been missing today.
There are a few things i suspect. I have never registered a nitrate on the api test. Phosphates are trace, no ammonia, no nitrites, dkh is 9-10, calcium is 420. this past week I have started watching ORP. My tank has never been above 190 in the past week. One item of interest is that my ehiem heater sprung a leak. I noticed yesterday that water had made it in the glass tube and began rusting in the bottom 2 inches. One other thing is that i suspect my flow is too low in the biopellet reactor. They barely tumble and im using half of the recommended amount of pellets. After that i am out of ideas. How can I keep my fish alive? What is causing my orp to stay so low? Feedings are minimal and there are only 4 fish in the tank.